All things considered, radioactive iodine treatment is “getting off easy.” It lacks the existential fatigue and sunburn from within that sets in with external beam radiation. It lacks the utterly disjunctive transformation and bizarro pain from unexpected places that comes with surgery, and it lacks the body-falling-apart poison experience of chemo (I’ve only heard about …
Category Archives: Cancer
Vegetarian Low Iodine Diet: Weeks 2 and 3
So much for food blogging. I was spending too much time cooking. And for the last week I have felt pretty crappy. Today was my first “good day” in just about a week. Tomorrow I expect to be released from the low iodine diet after my 8:30am scan. It hasn’t been that bad this time. …
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Radioactivity: Day 3
We are now in the home stretch. Another long night of sleep (thank you daylight savings). This morning I took my final lithium (good riddance). Carrie and the kittens come home this afternoon, though nobody gets a hug yet. I want to put up a “welcome home, girls!” banner. But first, I have a lot …
Day 2: Fun and Games With Microsieverts
So we’re getting close to 48 hours of radioactivity here at chez Berri.Yesterday I was up and down and today feels more of the same. I’m pretty tired (though I may in fact, just be tired) and so have slept a fair amount. I get headaches from time to time. My mouth and eyes are dry. …
“With over a hundred millicuries, there’s no fun and games”
The tech had just invited a resident to watch me taking my dose of radioactive iodine. I remarked that I was eager to photograph the pill. That wasn’t allowed–once the pill was out, it was going into me. No fun and games. We walked into a small room with a list of regulations on the …
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Vegetarian Low Iodine Diet Redux [LID]: Week 1
It’s Sunday. Time to watch football and cook a lot. Here are some vegan/low iodine things we’ve been making. Recipe links are posted when available. I’m too lazy to type things out if they’re not already typed out online or in our electronic recipe book already (there’s a lot of copy/paste in this post, but it’ll …
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LID Day 1 + Bureaucracy, not in that order
And we’re back to cancer blogging. Yesterday I spent a couple hours at the Jewish General getting my records in order. I forgot how much bureaucracy there is to being a patient: Keeping files, updating files, moving between offices, the whole gig. Though I have to say that prior experience has meant I know how to …
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